viction that millions are taken in. Throughout Switzerland there is a rain of pleas, tracts, illustrated brochures, huge folios, faked telegrams, false news. At the same time, by every avowable and inavowable means, the economic offensive is carried on. All Germany from the intellectuals to the last commercial traveler, to say nothing of the chemists, the bankers, and the ministers of the Old God, is mobilized to get the greatest possible profit out of the war; the German consulates, too, the imperial embassy at Berne, around which circle twelve hundred employees, some of whom were promoters of intrigues. It is the dance of millions; the result of undue influence exercised upon many newspapers which were offered advertisements paid at a high rate on condition that they should be the canal for German news and German theses. And everyone cried together: 'Founded on the rock, virtuous and disciplined, Germany will conquer.' Being nearer the sources of truth, less influenced by that disgusting Realpolitik, French-speaking Switzerland unanimously denounced the German crime from the very outset. Her conviction never wavered for a single instant. And it was at the hours when France might have been thought to be lost that she spoke her sympathy with the greatest vehemence. Harder pressed, more efficaciously worked upon since there is community of language between her and Germany, German-speaking Switzerland staggered under the violence of the attack. There was reason to believe that the end of the spiritual unity of the old country had come. Little by little, however, the truth came out. In December, 1914, Karl Spitteler, the great poet, nearly all of whose friends and admirers were Germans, whereas, in France, he counted them on the fingers of one hand, con demned the violation of Belgium, denounced Cain calumniating Abel' with noble indignation. Other voices were raised, railed at, naturally, by a set of second-rate journalists, of men naturalized the day before, and later of Bolsheviki in the pay of moribund imperialism. It must be affirmed that the reaction began to be felt in German-speaking Switzerland long before the victory. With its sound common sense, which wants to be informed, to compare, to reflect, which requires time, and still more time, the mass of the Germanspeaking people finished by grasping the meaning of the war. The lamentable lines of civilians evacuated from the north of France ended the demonstration. Surprised and deceived, the Helvetian democracy saw once more what it had to do. As early as 1915, as soon as a train of wounded or repatriated people reached Switzerland via Schaffhouse, the crowds came running up, bare-headed, to acclaim the victims of Prussian militarism. There still exists, it must be admitted, a clan of admirers of the German military methods, of the centres of 'neutralism' covering suspicious goods, persons who do not lose an opportunity of showing that the war has taught them nothing; but the great majority of the Swiss people, we are sure of it, acclaimed the fall of the rapacious Prussian. Switzerland has thus passed through a crisis which for a moment might have been thought to be mortal. Let us hope she will henceforward be more conscious of her traditions, more attached to that liberty for which so many men have sacrificed their lives, and unanimously hostile to any greedy imperialism. Having been called upon to speak of a country to which we belong, and which we love, we have been unwilling to hide anything about the years it has just lived through. Between men all groping in search of the same ideal, the truth must be said without trying to take shelter behind those vague formulæ, those equivocal statements which hide nothing but weakness of soul and sad misunderstanding. Having shown the wretched side of our national life, it is a joy now to point out its grandeur. Since we could not fight, each man said in his tongue with naïve sincerity, like a Vaudois peasant, 'We have revenged ourselves by means of charity.' We know that it would be hateful to pride ourselves upon that charity. It was our privilege to dry a few tears, bind up a few wounds, save a few waifs from the shipwreck. measure However great our efforts were, we know there is no common between that and the loss undergone by those who have suffered in their dearest affections, and the horrible agony of exiles dying of grief, and the slow crucifixion of so many peoples. When face to face with those who for more than four years have struggled unceasingly, in mud, in snow, in blood, so that there may still be liberty and justice in the world, we shall ever fall short of their due meed of gratitude. Caring for your wounded, clothing your repatriated people, guiding your blind was one way of crying our thanks to you, of legitimating our titles as men. We wished, too,- and this is what explains the persistency of the enthusiasm of our crowds,-to wipe out the bad works of some, protest against certain silences, deserve thus a place in the society of nations of good-will. And it is in this spirit, which is free from all Pharisaism, that we shall speak of the charitable effort of Switzerland, showing to the soldiers of France that they have not fought for ungrateful people. The Swiss War Charities' are to be counted by hundreds. To avoid falling into a dry nomenclature, we must limit ourselves, and choose somewhat arbitrarily. Honor to whom honor is due. The International Agency of Prisoners of War had in Geneva, as early as October, 1914, more than a thousand collaborators, presided over by a man of as great value as modesty, M. Gustave Ador, who is to-day the President of the Confederation. 'People turn to our agency,' wrote M. Ador himself, in order to know about the organization of a camp, the means of corresponding, the treatment. the prisoners undergo, what religious or medical care they are the object of, in what circumstances such and such a death took place, the site and state of tombs, the nature and duration of an epidemic in a camp. The reports of our inspectors, drawn up with scrupulous impartiality, have largely contributed to the stopping of certain abuses, to the bettering of the conditions under which the prisoners were lodged and cared for. Let us call attention to our protestation against the camps of reprisals in Germany, our ceaseless efforts to obtain for the civil populations of the north of France the right to correspond with their relatives who were prisoners in Germany or living in France, fighting or not in the ranks of the French army, our intervention with a view to the repatriation of the grievously wounded, and the internment of the sick in Switzerland. Let us recall, too, our frequent protestations against the non-observation of the Convention of Geneva relative to the medical and sanitary personnel unjustly held prisoners in the camps of concentration our protestation against the massacring of the Armenian populations.' The letter-bag of the agency con tained as a rule a daily average of one thousand eight hundred letters received, and three thousand five hundred letters dispatched. There were three million names on the registers of the department for the finding of the missing. More than fifty million parcels were sent to the prisoners on behalf of the families. Millions of human beings owe their lives to the Agency of Geneva, thousands of parents a lessening of their grief, the end of their anguish. That is something to be proud of. Truly have M. Ador and his battalion of collaborators deserved promotion to the highest rank in the order of love of one's neighbor. The Swiss Post Office did a great amount of work, too. It goes without saying that everything sent to prisoners is post free. During 1915, only, seventy-five million letters and post cards, thirty-six million of which were for the French prisoners alone, and twenty million parcels passed through Switzerland. It may be imagined that these figures involved a tremendous amount of writing, registering, and verifying. Hundreds of volunteers seconded the ordinary personnel, which was too hard put to it. No one spoke of going on strike when doing that work. One Christmas Eve a good old fellow said: 'One gets tired out, and has a headache, but it pleases one all the same!' village, found a brotherly welcome in our stations. They were gently led up to the threshold where they would meet again. The Family Joy had a similar aim. The repatriated people from the north constantly found in Switzerland a son, a husband, a father who had long been prisoners in Germany, and then interned. They met for a few moments. The train whistled. As an old woman said, they had not the time to cry together. The Family Joy brought together the families separated by the storm, offered them five days' stay together, at Le Bouverêt, a pretty village on the banks of the lake. There they remained for hours, seated on the beach, or under the chestnut trees, hand in hand, and eye to eye. Three or four years' privation and moral torture! Suddenly pass out of the storm, and find one's self on the shores of a sapphire lake! 'We say nothing, we look at one another, that is enough. We are so happy!' These were the words of a sergeant who was giving his arm to his aged mother, more than eighty years old, and the two went on with slow, short steps, smiling. But, alas! all the prisoners were not interned in Switzerland. Those who were to remain till the very last day behind the barbed wire were innumerable. Among them were many intellectuals and students. What was to be done? Swiss professors founded the University Society of Prisoners of War. 'We wish,' said they, 'to preserve our pupils from psychological misery, lead them to understand and see into intellectual things again; make them into men capable of supporting their ordeal with dignity.' According to their affinities of language, the work was shared out between the Universities of Basle, Berne, Fribourg, Zurich, Neuchâtel, Geneva, and Lausanne. Elementary and high er-grade pedagogical associations lent their help, and succeeded in getting into touch with as many as six thousand pupils, four thousand of whom were French, who were provided with books, pamphlets, and a whole school outfit (copy-books, pencils, chalk, blackboards). Precious friendships were thus struck up over a great distance, which will survive the war, for the good of both countries. 'I was worn out and my nerves were stretched to breaking point,' wrote lately one of these students who had gone back to his family after forty-nine months' captivity, 'when I received a parcel of books. At the top of the pile there was a translation of the Apology of Socrates. I read it with avidity. The firmness of Socrates, his smiling stoicism, his faith in the eternity of just thought, filled me with admirable strength. I was saved. And what joy I felt when I read, written very small between two lines of the text: "Am unknown, I shake your hand.” But there were not merely students among the prisoners. Those thousands of men whom ennui was wearing away, for whom neurasthenia was on the watch, had to be thought of as well. Sometimes there came, by indirect ways, letters of despair. 'It's enough to make you go off your head. You turn round in a narrow courtyard, you turn again and again. Then you sit down and look at your toes. When it rains in torrents we gather in the dormitory where we wait, stupidly, for night to come.' Several societies set to work. One of them alone sent more than fifty thousand volumes to more than forty camps. Our good people living in French-speaking Switzerland were touchingly eager to give reading matter to those who were being shipwrecked under the gray sky of Germany. I am sending you my whole library,' wrote a peasant, 'six books, But there is an effort which crowns all the others. Charity is a noble thing, but after the slaughtering, the massacres in Armenia, the crushing of Serbia, the devastation of the north of France, the deportation of civilians, the murder of Miss Cavell, the drowning of the two thousand passengers of the Lusitania, there were hours when the Swiss, conscious of the stake in the drama which was being played,-the liberty or enslavement of peoples,envied those who, free from every other duty, were looking death in the face. With such crimes continually repeated, systematically, methodically, it was really not sufficient to be charitable and neutral after a certain fashion. One's conscience could not be at ease. In the great struggle of human dignity against 'the necessity which knows no law,' there could not but be Swiss. This war was not a war like other wars. It was a crusade! The whole world was leagued against those who were practising terrorism, and wished to bring the peoples to their knees. The day after the violation of Belgium, three thousand Swiss, which number, little by little, was increased to six thousand, enlisted under the republican flag of France the strength of two regiments, composed of several hundreds of German-speaking Swiss, Swiss from the Tessin, Frenchspeaking Swiss, especially, nearly all discharged from the army of their own country, or on leave; men of every age, from seventeen to fifty-eight, of every profession, from the Protestant pastor to the hotel waiter, from the student to the cowherd. In August, 1914, close on two thousand Swiss volunteers crossed Paris behind the red flag with the white cross, singing the patriotic hymn that Amiel composed when Switzerland, in 1856, rose against Prussia at the time of the Neuchâtel revolution. Roulez tambours, pour ouvrir la frontière, A young fellow of eighteen wrote to his parents: It's over. I have enlisted for France, but as a Swiss. I shall not be called up here for two years. So I am at present quite free. What decided me? It is quite simple. The Germans have violated Belgium. If they can, exploiting this crime, they will gulp Europe down. So I, who do not want to be swallowed by them, am going to fight. And it seems to me that in fighting for France I am fighting too for my country. For who would dare to say that if France and England were conquered Switzerland's turn would not come next? So, without a look behind, forward, for the two countries I love! Mamma will not keep me back. She loves me too much to cause me that terrible sorrow. As for papa, how often has he said to me: 'Walk straight, my lad!' I am obeying him. Enlisted in the Légion Etrangère, the solid framework of which they formed in the early days, the Swiss fought valiantly at Arras, Carency, Souchez, Notre-Dame de Lorette, and Neuville Saint-Vaast, where the marching regiment of the legion was mentioned in dispatches for having advanced four kilometres under a hail of shell, as it was to be later, again, in Champagne, which won for it the honor of wearing the fourragère. Since then, in fight after fight, the regiment has been mentioned twelve times (the record of the French army) and won the double red fourragère. It was in Champagne, at the attack on the butte de Souain, that Captain Junod, a leader worshiped by his men, fell. At the very beginning of the Helvetian mobilization he had come to offer his services to his country, but been refused, and then had given himself up wholly to a cause he said it and repeated it to his family on which the existence of Switzerland depended. Having been grievously wounded a first time, decorated, and mentioned in dispatches, he went back to the front when scarcely healed. Here are a few lines taken from his letters home. French Front, September 15, 1915. I was deeply moved by the ceremony that took place on the 13th, the giving of the flag to the First Foreign Regiment. When our new flag, in marvelously fine weather, began to unfold its three colors above the regiment, I began to cry like a baby. September 19, 1918. I believe that the taking of the white works (where Junod had been wounded during the Arras offensive) was a poor show compared to what is awaiting us. Provided I'm not mutilated, I don't mind what happens. I shall stick full sail on. I am very smart, anyway. I have had my green uniform touched up, and it fits me like a glove. I think we shan't dishonor ourselves nor our forbears. Monday, September 27, 8 A.M. There are times when I feel exhausted. And then the spring that has never come uncoiled puts everything back into place. This morning I feel young and strong. Was present at indescribable things. There is a bit of a calm. We're going forward. Tuesday, September 28, 1915, 12.30 P. M. I am writing in the darkness. The day has been fearful. We are going forward slowly. The adversary is hard as nails, his artillery is admirably served, and never |